heartless

2 stars

I was looking forward to reading this book as I really liked the Lunar Chronicles series. Sadly, this book isn’t nearly as strong as any of the books in that series. It’s a twist on Alice in Wonderland and just doesn’t work. (It’s meant to be a “prequel” to explain how the Queen of Hearts came to be.) Catherine is a Lady that loves to bake and despite her position of privilege, only dreams of opening a bakery with her maid. The King of Hearts has his eyes set on marrying Catherine and although this would make her parents very happy, Catherine doesn’t want to be Queen. A new court jester named….Jest (insert eye roll here) appears and Catherine is immediately attracted to him, which of course, can only mean trouble.

The effort to twist this story into the characters in Wonderland is forced and just doesn’t work. I found myself rolling my eyes at the rapid fire descriptions of different characters that served no purpose other than to show that the author had read Alice in Wonderland. The main story was pretty thin. Catherine was whiney, indecisive and weak. I couldn’t bring myself to care about her or what happened to her. Jest is one dimensional and much too angsty to be a “hero”.

I’m assuming that this is book one in a series, and if so, I highly doubt I read the rest in the series.